Linnton, Oregon, is never quiet. Freight trains clank through the outer-Portland neighborhood, past the community center, a bar, a daycare, mobile homes and farmhouses with boarded-up windows. The Willamette River lies north; southward, the streets climb tree-covered hills. Each train is marked with a different number: 1971 isliquefied natural gas; 1202 isdiesel; 1999,tar. They carry petroleum products to Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub, a series of tanks and pipelines at the edge of Linnton that stretch six miles up the Willamette toward downtown Portland.
The tanks, which store 90% of Oregon’s liquid fuel and all the jet fuel used by Portland International Airport, were built in the 1950s — well before scientists knew about the magnitude 9 earthquake overdue to hit the Pacific Northwest. By the mid-1990s, the city implemented new seismic standards, but older, less-sound structures, like the tanks at the CEI Hub, were exempted. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey predict that the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake has a 37% likelihood of happening in the next 50 years. A 2022 report projects that when that occurs, the CEI Hub could dump up to 193.7 million gallons of oil into the Willamette, a disaster on par with the Deepwater Horizon spill.
“This is in the middle of a town,” said Linnton activist Sarah Taylor. “There are no ways to escape. We will be trapped.”
Experts say the CEI Hub is the most vulnerable site in a region already woefully underprepared for “the really big one.” Despite those risks, the city of Portland has doubled down on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure at the hub. Activists like Taylor are resisting these efforts at expansion — and are advocating for policies to safeguard the river and surrounding communities from what could be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
While the CEI Hub appears to stand on solid ground, that won’t be true during a magnitude 9 earthquake, said Yumei Wang, an expert in disaster preparedness and infrastructure at Portland State University. The ground beneath the tanks is a liquefaction zone, meaning the soil tends to liquefy during powerful quakes. The tanks could sink into the ground, tilt or slide into the river. Some tanks are made of metal so flimsy that an earthquake would likely “rip them apart,” Wang said. The lids, which float on the surface of the tanks’ liquid contents, would rub against the containers, creating sparks and igniting nearby brush.
“This is in the middle of a town. There are no ways to escape. We will be trapped.”
Wildfires and toxic gas would then spread through Linnton. Oil would float downriver to the Columbia and the Pacific, coating the fur of river otters and the feathers of cormorants. “It would kill the Lower Columbia Estuaries,” said Kate Murphy, senior community organizer at the nonprofit Columbia Waterkeeper. “It’s unthinkable.”
No first responders would be available, either — no Hazmat team, firefighters or medics. “Roads and docks won’t be accessible,” said Jay Wilson, resilience coordinator for disaster management in Clackamas County, which borders the city of Portland. “That oil spill could actually last longer than the earthquake recovery. And we need to address it.”
Engineers and advocates, including Wilson and Wang, have been sounding the alarm on the CEI Hub since 2011, a few years after Wang began work on a report flagging it as the Oregon energy sector’s greatest seismic hazard. In the late 2010s, amid increasing concern about earthquake risk and climate change, the city of Portland passed a resolution opposing the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. A year later, Multnomah County, which encompasses most of Portland, adopted a similar resolution.
Since then, three other reports authored by Portland State University researchers, a policy research group and a state commission have recommended paying greater attention to seismic risk at the hub. The most recent, released in 2022, categorized it as “a major threat to safety, environment, and recovery” and pointed out that taxpayers would likely have to pay for its recovery.
But around the same time that local and state municipalities committed to phasing out fossil fuel infrastructure, a newcomer arrived on the scene: Zenith Energy, a Texas-based fuel storage company. Locals noticed an uptick in the number of oil trains running through their neighborhoods. In 2021, following years of local activism, Portland denied Zenith the land use compatibility statement it needed to continue operations, citing the city’s climate objectives. But the next year, after extensive closed-door lobbying from Zenith, the city approved five more years of oil storage. (A city auditor later ruled that Zenith’s lobbying violated city regulations.) And since then, Portland has doubled down on expanding Zenith’s activities, approving three new pipelines.
From the city’s perspective, the pivot to biofuels still satisfies its commitment to phase out fossil fuels. “This decision is a strong signal to industry that Portland will work with partners toward cleaner air and less dependence on fossil fuels,” City Commissioner Dan Ryan told the press in 2022. But activists believe Portland is backpedaling on its previous commitments. Magan Reed, information officer for the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, did not comment on this apparent contradiction but noted that the city is working with various partners to address seismic safety issues. In contrast, Jan Zuckerman, a member of Extinction Rebellion, sees no difference between the harm caused by biofuels and fossil fuels: Both release carbon into the atmosphere and could potentially pollute the river and surrounding communities. To prevent that outcome, she added, “we have to attack from every angle.”
Change is beginning to take place. In 2022, the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 1567, which requires operators of bulk oils and liquid fuel terminals to commission their own seismic vulnerability assessments and develop risk mitigation plans within the next few years.
“This decision is a strong signal to industry that Portland will work with partners toward cleaner air and less dependence on fossil fuels.”
Activists are also pressuring the city to do more. Zenith still needs an air-quality permit from Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Activists have urged the DEQ to deny it and are already mobilizing for the public comment period once the DEQ makes its decision.
But Taylor, who lives in Linnton, sees this focus as too narrow. “There’s all kinds of tanks down here, not just Zenith,” she said. Taylor wants the state to implement a zoning code ensuring that future development on industrial and residential zones promotes a healthy environment and quality of life. Activists who call themselves “Risky Business” are working with Multnomah County to implement risk bonds, a mechanism that guarantees that companies at the Hub have adequate insurance and mandatory trust funds to compensate the public in the event of a disaster.
Last April, 48 neighborhood associations and 36 environmental and faith-based organizations submitted a letter to public officials, including Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, D, and the DEQ, urging them to take action. Locals gathered at Augustana Lutheran Church, one of the letter’s signatories, to demand new information campaigns on the dangers posed by the CEI Hub, legislation requiring companies to assume full financial responsibility for accidents, and a new plan for fuel storage. They held signs identifying their neighborhoods: Cully, Woodstock, Lloyd — and Linnton. Speakers expressed their anger and fear, among them Wilson, the Clackamas County disaster coordinator. “The clock continues to tick,” he said. “We cannot stop the earthquake, but we can minimize or prevent catastrophe.”
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the September 2024 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The big spill.”
